author of a constitutional scheme for Carolina which is noteworthy for its emphasis, thus early, upon the importance of religious toleration.  In 1672, when Ashley became Lord Chancellor, he became Secretary of Presentations and, until 1675, Secretary to the Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations.  Meanwhile he carried on his medical work and must have obtained some reputation in it; for he is honorably mentioned by Sydenham, in his Method of Curing Fevers (1676), and had been elected to the Royal Society in 1668.  But his real genius lay in other directions.

Locke himself has told us how a few friends began to meet at his chamber for the discussions of questions which soon passed into metaphysical enquiry; and a page from a commonplace book of 1671 is the first beginning of his systematic work.  Relieved of his administrative duties in 1675, he spent the next four years in France, mainly occupied with medical observation.  He returned to England in 1679 to assist Lord Shaftesbury in the passionate debates upon the Exclusion Bill.  Locke followed his patron into exile, remaining abroad from 1683 until the Revolution.  Deprived of his fellowship in 1684 through the malice of Charles II, he would have been without means of support had not Shaftesbury bequeathed him a pension.  As it was, he had no easy time.  His extradition was demanded by James II after the Monmouth rebellion; and though he was later pardoned he refused to return to England until William of Orange had procured his freedom.  A year after his return he made his appearance as a writer.  The Essay Concerning Human Understanding and the Two Treatises of Government were both published in 1690.  Five years earlier the Letter Concerning Toleration was published in its Latin dress; and four years afterwards an English translation appeared.  This last, however, perhaps on grounds of expediency, Locke never acknowledged until his will was published; for the time was not yet suited to such generous speculations.  Locke was thus in his fifty-eighth year when his first admitted work appeared.  But the rough attempts at the essay date from 1671, and hints towards the Letter on Toleration can be found in fragments of various dates between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years of his life.  Of the Two Treatises the first seems to have been written between 1680 and 1685, the second in the last year of his Dutch exile.[1]

[Footnote 1:  On the evidence for these dates see the convincing argument of Mr. Fox-Bourne in his Life of Locke, Vol.  II, pp. 165-7.]

The remaining fourteen years of Locke’s life were passed in semi-retirement in East Anglia.  Though he held public office, first as Commissioner of Appeals, and later of Trade, for twelve years, he could not stand the pressure of London writers, and his public work was only intermittent.  His counsel, nevertheless, was highly valued; and he seems to have won no small confidence from William in diplomatic